The American Museum of Natural History is known to some as the museum where statues, dinosaurs, and all other animals come to life at night. Although this only seen in the movie Night at the Museum, to most who visit the museum feel like the artifacts in the museum actually come to life in their life like exhibits. The museum is located on 79th street and Central Park West which is less than a half an hour of travel from Baruch.

Currently the museum features new exhibits such as The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, Frogs: a Chorus of Colors, Picturing Science, and many more. To those who have never been to the American Museum of Natural History, it is a must-see and for those who’ve been there several times, I promise you will enjoy these new exhibits!

The arts invoke countless emotions in the audiences and an art review’s “raison d’être”  is to elicit those emotions from the readers even when they were not presented at the performance. A concert’s review does exactly the same purpose, except that experiencing music is something so abstract as the music itself and that the music reviewer’s mission becomes a thousand times harder. Trinity Church Calls; Composers respond by Steve Smith and A Tighter, Lighter, Smaller Mahler by Allan Kozinn offer different styles of reviewing along with their pros and cons.

In his article, Steve Smith talks about the arduous task of contemporary composers competing with their ancient predecessors Bach, Brahms, Mahler in commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack. Although giving certain applause to the ancient composers in the opening paragraph, Steve Smith signifies the many performances by contemporary artists given to the Trinity Church for their commemorating concert, one of which was ultimately chosen by it, Moran’s “Trinity requiem.” Asides from the occasional drops of musical jargon into the review, Steve goes right into the details of the performance and the emotion each reveals with unswerving manner. “Crashing” organ chords resonates the sounds of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers; gentle “dissonances” and “nervous” repetition of the chorus reanimate the scene in which the whole world was watching the event with unanimous prayers and hopes for the victims; the organ dropped out after offertory based on Pachelbel’s Canon, leaving only the cello playing elicits from the readers grief, redemption, diminishment, and loss as if we were there again, shocked at the debris that is left after the attack. In short, Steve Smith’s expert musical perception and compelling vocabulary express the grief that was the purpose of the performance.

Allan Kozinn’s review tackles a different event that is more professionally involved, the centenary commemoration of the premier of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde.” The Orchestra of St.Luke celebrated this occasion by performing the reduced version of “Das Lied” by Schoenberg and Riehn. Allan elaborates the immediate effect of moving from Mahler’s full score to Schoenberg and Reihn’s trimmed version, lauding its “benefits as obvious as the compromise.” Furthermore, he compliments the orchestra for having managed the best of their ability to handle the transition. Allan seldom brings out out small setbacks of the performance objectively and helps underscore the success of the performance, like in this critic: “Granted, certain strands are eliminated, or slipped into one of the two keyboard parts. But the essence is here, and it works.” He uses strong, opinionated language and adjectives such as “understandably,””obvious,””freshly,””hefty,””strong,” throughout the review to convey the voice of a true music critic. “Street” terms like “under the hood” and “tight” are used twice to induce a comic relief in the overall heavy and professional review.

As the arts can bring out countless interpretations, so do the style of reviews varies accordingly. Steve Smith and Alan Kozinn handle different topics in their reviews yet their opinions as art critics both strive to excite in the readers the emotions that they had felt while attending those performances and to help them participate in such events in the future in order to truly experience them by themselves.

Two Important Motifs

The novels Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Namesake by Johnathan Safran Foer and Jhumpa Lahiri both involve characters that try to get on with their lives by accepting their past. Throughout the novels motifs like the key and Gogol’s name invoke remembrance in the main character that carries them through the novels.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oscar goes on a journey to bring him closer to his father and to get over his recent death. He finds a key in his father’s closet and spends an entre eight months searching for a lock that fits it. The key that Oscar finds drives him to remember his father and how he always gave him scavenger hunts so he goes on this journey to find the lock to help him understand his father and hopefully get over his death.

In The Namesake, Gogol struggles in his labyrinth through life to become the first generation of American in his family and tries to split himself from his Bengali parents because of the embarrassment his origins. The motif that causes him to constantly be reminded of his embarrassing origin is his name and no matter how far he distances himself from his family, he always has his name. This causes him to legally change it and he finally moves away to college.

On his way back home, a man jumped into the train tracks and caused the electricity to go out. Later that day, Ashoke finally explains the origin of Gogol’s name and that makes him regret his name change. Eventually after his fathers death, Gogol begins to slowly go back to his family and finally accept his name. The driving force through Gogol’s life and the subject that always brings him back to his origin, is his name.

Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and Jhumpa Lahiri, author of the namesake both invoke rembernece among their readers however they do it in different ways. Foer uses the story of a young nine year old boy while Lahiri uses the growing up and adjusting to new lifestyle that Gogol goes through.

Foer tells the story of Oskar Schell who is a nine year old boy who lost his father in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers. Oskar was very close with his dad, and had the utmost respect for him. After his dads death Oskar has a very difficult time falling asleep, he would lay awake in his bed “inventing” for hours. He would think of all these weird random objects. Some of the inventions are things that would have helped his dad like the bird jacket. Oskar spends the entire novel trying to find the lock for a key that he thought his father left him. Oskar also meets his grandfather who he never knew. Although Oskar never knows that this person is his grandfather but he does often feel that the guy does things very similar to his own dad which probably helps him a lot in getting over the loss of his dad. At the end of the novel Oskar goes and digs up his fathers grave seeing the grave Oskar is finally able to complete his journey and come to rest with the death of his father While looking for this lock Oskar is able to connect with his dead dad and create the kind of closure he needed to be able to move on with his life and sleep more easily. Through out the novel Foer throws in memories that Oskar had from when his dad was still alive.

Lahiri tells the story of Gogol  Ganguli who is an American born Indian whose parents are both deep in Indian tradition especially  his mom. Gogol eventually changes his name and goes off to Yale instead of following his fathers footsteps at MIT. Gogol continues to become more American he smokes and goes to party along with dating American girls. Eventually Gogol learns the true history of his name and starts to feel terribly about changing his name, when his dad suddenly dies of a heart attack Gogol has a new found attraction to his Indian lifestyle. Since there is no grave for Gogol’s dad Gogol cries and reminisce’s by a big poster of his dad. It takes Gogol a long time and a major transformation in his lifestyle in order to really miss his dad. Although they were not so close especially later in Gogol’s life the death really takes a toll on Gogol and he starts to really miss his dad. Lahiri uses this in order to evoke a kind of odd remembrance between Gogol and his father he wasn’t so close with.

Hi, my name is Kenny Vu. I’ve been a native New Yorker for 18 years, and I love living in this city.

I don’t exactly have any hobbies. Instead, you can say that my hobby is trying new hobbies. Over the past years I found myself trying something new every few months. I found myself delving into several hobbies such as: digital art (Photoshop), building computers for myself and friends, playing guitar (bought an electric, ended up settling for acoustic), trying to learn piano and photography. Unfortunately, trying so many things means that I’m mediocre at everything (well, except tech) but I’m still happy I tried.

I’m a generally normal guy, somewhat passive, and when I speak to people I enjoy individual conversations compared to large gatherings. I like to explore the city with friends to find “chill” places. I like to make bad jokes. I like to listen to all kinds of music (maybe not country). I love looking for spots to see manhattan’s nighttime cityscape – I love the lights. Hope to get to know you all better!